British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is joining forces with American rival Pfizer to lock down some 20% of the drug market for HIV/AIDS. That should help put the 2 companies on the map in an area that has been thoroughly dominated in recent years by the rising star, Gilead.

The tie-up calls for GSK to hold 85% of the JV, which will be based in London and be run by Dominique Limet, currently of GSK.

It will have working capital of about $370 million.

The UN estimates that 33 million people worldwide carry HIV.

Raymond James analyst Eric Le Berrigaud was bullish on the move, especially given GSK’s tottering position in this market.

“In having access to Pfizer’s research and development [of AIDS treatment], Glaxo will try to mitigate the downward trend of its HIV/AIDS sales as its patents start expiring over the next five years,” Le Berrigaud told Forbes.

Glaxo’s current sales in HIV/AIDS have topped out at $2.2 billion, but they are likely to drop by 60% or more by 2014 due to patent expirations of old standbys Retrovir, Epivir and Ziagen.

The deal “could perhaps add another half billion [to Glaxo’s sales],” estimated Le Berrigaud.

Gilead has been on a tear in recent years, due to its trio of HIV drugs, all of which leverage tenofovir, which is prescribed in one form or another for 80% of new HIV patients in the US, and nearly that many in the EU.

HHS guidelines recommend that Gilead’s drugs be used as backbone therapy for HIV/AIDS, in part because they can be taken once daily which helps improve compliance.

Newspapers have served as a primary information resource and a key watchdog against abuses of power by government and private interests since hacked-off Bay Staters threw British tea into Boston harbor.

But now they are on the bullet train to oblivion.

The most recent casualty was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which had been printing for 146 years.

Two weeks before that, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News turned out the lights, and the Tucson Citizen is on life support.

At least these cities still have a daily, for now. Most observers believe it won’t be long before some major American cities have none at all.

The San Francisco Chronicle lost a $1 million per week in 2008.

The Chicago Tribune, LA Times, New Haven Register and Philadelphia Inquirer are all owned by companies in bankruptcy. Chicago’s Sun-Times and the Miami Herald are for sale and no one’s buying.

The major problem is collapsing ad revenue. It’s dropped 25% in the last 2 years, which is actually a steeper decline than that posted by America’s Big Three automakers over the same time period.

Craigslist and similar online sites have blown up a 2-century-old business model just like that.

The papers’ efforts to balance the books have led to draconian workforce reductions that compromise the final product. The LA Times’ news staff is half what it was a decade ago, for example. 

“I can’t imagine what civil society would be like (without newspapers),” Buzz Woolley told the New York Times. The San Diego businessman has been a long time critic of the city’s Union-Tribune, and now backs VoiceofSanDiego.org, an internet news site.

“I don’t want to imagine it. A huge amount of information would just never get out.”

The Cleveland Clinic is test driving HealthVault, Microsoft’s Web-based personal health record.

Officials representing the prestigious health care provider indicated that the pilot began November 3. It’s the first one to track multiple diseases using multiple home-based medical devices.

The pilot will enroll 400 patient volunteers that have various combinations of diabetes, hypertension and heart failure. The multitasking volunteers will utilize HealthVault-enabled heart rate and blood pressure monitors, glucometers, weight scales and maybe even their kitchen sinks to monitor daily fluctuations in their health status (no word yet on which kitchen sinks are HealthVault-enabled, by the way).

Using their computers, volunteers will upload all that data into their HealthVault record and share it in secure fashion with their physicians at the Clinic.

The Cleveland Clinic already offers patients a home-grown personal health record known as MyChart. It claims that 150,000 patients use MyChart. Comparisons of the two systems are not available, nor were statements regarding the marginal value of HealthVault in MyChart users, the two systems’ interoperability, pilot costs etc.

It also remained unclear how the pilot would be evaluated and by whom. Financial terms and strategic objectives of the Microsoft-Cleveland Clinic hook-up were not disclosed.

“These kinds of innovative solutions have the potential to help physicians and patients save time, improve accuracy of health information and communicate more effectively,” said Christopher Hebert, MD, of the Clinic’s Nephrology and Hypertension Department.

“We expect to demonstrate that innovative, cost-effective technology solutions can empower patients to partner more effectively with their physicians and better manage their chronic conditions from where they live and play – in the home,” said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group.

Eli Lilly and Company has announced it is nearing a settlement with the US Attorney’s Office regarding unsavory marketing and promotional practices for Zyprexa, its antipsychotic blockbuster. As a consequence, Lilly will take a $1.4 billion charge, or $1.29 per share in Q3 2008.

Lilly stands accused of promoting the drug for psychotic symptoms in the setting of dementia even though the FDA did not approve the drug for this purpose.

As part of the settlement, Lilly announced it will incorporate a compliance program to assure its marketing and promotional practices comply with all laws and regulations.

“We now have a heightened sense of responsibility to all our stakeholders to intensify efforts to resolve these issues,” said Robert A. Armitage, Lilly’s general counsel.

Lilly’s move is an attempt to preempt a long, complex legal battle. Medicaid Fraud Control Units in 30 states had begun coordinating with the US Court while pursuing their own investigations of the matter.

Since its introduction in 1996, Zyprexa has been prescribed for 26 million people around the world. Q2 sales exceeded $1.1 billion, nearly a third of Lilly’s total revenue. Zyprexa sales dropped in 2008 as competitive drugs entered the market and concerns about weight gain and diabetes risk have surfaced.

Last month Pizaazz reported that Zyprexa is also commonly used off-label for psychosis in children, although its efficacy has been questioned and serious side effects have been reported in this group.

As part of a sweeping reorganization of its research strategy, Pfizer plans to stop R & D in cardiac drugs.

The move must be a bitter pill to swallow. Pfizer is exiting a space it had dominated for years. Its cholesterol-lowering Lipitor for example, is the top selling drug in the world with 2007 sales of $12.7 billion, but its patent expires in 2011. The drug behemoth also did well with the blood pressure-lowering agent Norvasc , but generic forms became available in 2006.

Pfizer had hoped that torcetrapib, another cholesterol-reducing agent would extend the run, but the drug was shelved after a 2006 study revealed it caused cardiac complications and death.

The company also plans to abandon R & D in osteoporosis, obesity, liver disease and anemia. It plans to focus on more profitable areas, which for Pfizer means oncology, inflammation, diabetes, pain, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The reshuffling will not affect heart drugs that are well down the pipeline, including a clot prevention agent co-developed with Bristol-Meyers-Squibb. The 2 companies hope this medication will compete with Plavix, currently the world’s number two drug after Lipitor.

Pfizer’s annual R & D budget is $7.3 billion, which is enormous but nevertheless down 8% from last year. It has 114 human drug studies underway and 25 drugs in late stage development.